Last Thursday evening, December 7, the Kansas City Star moderated a Forum for five Democratic party candidates in the 2018 Kansas Governor's race. For an hour and a half, the five candidates gave one-minute responses to questions from the moderato…

Literacy emerges from a broad range of factors that include early childhood learning opportunities, development stages at which children are ready to learn abstract skills, and the flexibility of schools and teachers. Rita Norton will describe one white child’s decades long route to reading proficiency. Bill Mullins will discuss winning the literacy battle in several local, contemporary primary schools.

It’s a Noir Holiday! Authors Ann Aptaker and Stefani Deoul, as well as host Elizabeth Andersen, lead a frightfully festive tour through passion and crime in Gotham.The three books in the Cantor Gold series that we discuss are Criminal Gold, Tarnished Gold, and Genuine Gold.

John Fish will join us to speak abour recycling do’s and don’ts as we approach the holiday season. You may know him from the KC chapter of 350kc or the Kansas City Climate Coalition but he’ll be sharing his recycling knowledge from years of experience at Bridging The Gap’s recycling centers. Maurice Person of KC Aquaponics will be joining us for the second half of the show. He is an entrepreneur, Black farmer and a apart of the KC chapter of BUGS–Black Urban Growers. He has experience growing foods indoors and outdoors and teaches others–be it students at East Highschool or community members that attend his aquaponics workshops.

Marianne K. Martin, Lisa Marie Evans, and cheryl Pletcher talked with host Elizabeth Andersen about the Legacies of Lesbian Literature project. It was a conversation on the origins of the project (Marianne and Sandra Moran were keynote speakers at the National Women’s Music Festival in 2014); the roles of the team members; the interviews already filmed; and future plans.

We are currently living through an attack on every aspect of American democracy. This phenomena predated the Trump presidency and has been qualitatively accelerated by it.

This across-the-board constriction of the power and rule of the American people, to the extent that it had existed, has encompassed the suppression of voting rights; an attack on public education; the growth of enormous income inequality; the unimpeded influence of money in elections; the threat and constriction of the right of women to control their own bodies; the attack on peoples rights to build and join effective unions; the refusal to close the offshore prison of Guantnamo and the refusal to prosecute illegal torturers; the attack and net neutrality and access to the internet; the increase by the state of the surveillance of American citizens; the militarization of the police; encouragement of racism; the banning of Muslims; suppression of the right to demonstrate; and the growth in executive authority.

Guest ” Attorney Baher Azmy, the Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The CCR was founded in 1966 to advance the goals of the civil rights movement. Michael Ratner, our co-host and founder of Law And Disorder Radio, was its president emeritus at the time of his passing in May of last year. Baher Azmy and Michael worked closely together.

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Lawyers Youll Like: Alison McCrary

As part of our Lawyers Youll Like series, today we are joined by Alison McCrary. Alison is a social justice attorney, a Catholic nun, president of the Louisiana Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and a Spiritual Advisor on Louisianas death row. She is the former Program Director for the Community-Police Mediation at the New Orleans Office of the Independent Police Monitor where she created a national model for improving community-police relationships, taught at the New Orleans Police Academy, and helped develop similar programs in cities across the nation.

As a 2010 Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship in New Orleans, Alison challenged and helped reform policing practices and policies to transform relationships between police officers and the bearers of New Orleans indigenous cultural traditions. Alison has served as a National Lawyers Guild legal observer trainer and the New Orleans Legal Observer Program Coordinator.

Before law school, she worked at the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana providing litigation support on death penalty cases and at the United Nations in New York monitoring the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolutions.

Guest ” Attorney Alison McCrary. In New Orleans, Alison worked, clerked, and/or volunteered at Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, the Louisiana Voters Rights Network, Equity and Inclusion Campaign for the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation, Orleans Parish Public Defenders Office, Louisianas Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Loyola Universitys Community Justice Clinic. Nationally, Alison coordinates and provides legal support for social justice movements such as the School of the Americas Watch. She received her J.D. from Loyola Universitys College of Law in New Orleans and her B.A. in English at Georgia State University in Atlanta.

Net neutrality protests were held last Thursday, December 7, in front of Verizon stores in Kansas City, Missouri, and Olathe, Kansas. These were two of reportedly over 700 protests in all 50 states.

Over 15 people gathered in front of the Verizon store at 3385 Main St. in Kansas City, Missouri displaying signs saying things like, “Save the Internet”, “Stop the FCC”, and “No slow lanes”. I’m Spencer Graves reporting for KKFI. I went inside that Verizon store and asked for their thoughts. They said they were were a franchise. They knew the protesters were there but otherwise had no comments. A similar protest was held in front of a Verizon store at 15239 W. 117th St. in Olathe.

Net neutrality started entering the national consciousness in 2007 as documentation began to appear of how Internet access providers like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable were blocking, throttling, altering — including stripping encryption — and redirecting people’s requests for information from the Internet. This generated a wave of activism that still seems to be increasing. It generated 3.7 million comments to the US Federal Communications Commission in late 2014 that convinced the Obama administration to classify the Internet access providers as “telecommunications services” in early 2015 under Title II of the Telecommunications Act of 1934.

In late January of this year, President Trump named Ajit Pai to head the FCC. Pai quickly began to roll back some of the pro-consumer policies that had been implemented by Obama’s FCC. On May 18, they adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on “Restoring Internet Freedom”. That’s the freedom of Internet access providers like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and Spectrum, to block, throttle, alter and redirect your requests for Information from the Internet. Almost 22 million comments on that issue were filed with the FCC by its August 30 deadline. In late November, the FCC announced they would vote on “Restoring Internet Freedom” at their next meeting, December 14, this coming Thursday.

From “8 1/2” to “Day for Night” to “Ed Wood,” some very entertaining movies are movies about making movies. You can add “The Disaster Artist” to that distinguished list. James Franco directs and stars in “The Disaster Artist,” a behind-the-scenes film about the making of one of the worst movies of all time, the 2003 drama, “The Room.”

Franco gives perhaps the best performance of the year as Tommy Wiseau, a bizarre, enigmatic character who wrote, produced, directed and starred in “The Room,” which is an incoherent dramatic mess.

Franco gonzo performance is sure to garner an Oscar nomination, but he’s abetted by a terrific supporting cast that includes his brother Dave Franco, Seth Rogan, Zac Efron, Josh Hutcherson, Alison Brie and a number of stars who play themselves.

While “The Disaster Artist” is a very funny look at “The Room” and its oddball cast, it is also a loving, empathetic portrait of a person who pursued his dream in spite of having no talent.

And that brings us to “The Room,” which has become a cult favorite at local theaters. Tommy Wiseau’s movie is supposed to be a drama about a banker with an unfaithful girlfriend, but is unintentionally funny. Like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” people dress up as the characters, hoot at the screen and quote the awful dialogue along with characters in the movie.

So, don’t watch “The Room” at home alone. If you do, it’s just bad. I’d suggest seeing it at one of the local screenings so that you can get the full effect of audience participation

Also opening this week, “Just Getting Started” is a senior citizen comedy starring Morgan Freeman, Tommy Lee Jones and Rene Russo. It was written and directed by Ron Shelton of “Bull Durham” and “White Men Can’t Jump” fame. “Tom of Finland” is a drama about a gay artist plying his trade post WWII. “Another Wolfcop” is a horror comedy about a werewolf policeman.

Sonia Warshawski is a 92-year-old Holocaust survivor who ran a tailor shop in the now-demolished Metcalf South Shopping Center for over 30 years. Her story, and that of her quest to inform people about the Holocaust is chronicled in “Big Sonia” a documentary about her life directed by her granddaughter Leah Warshawski and Leah’s husband, Todd Soliday. Susan and Russ agree that it’s well worth seeing.

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